Sociology and Criminology-Open Access
Open Access

Criminal Investigation Priority Bias Problems and Proposed Solutions

Martin Leoy^{* *}Correspondence: Martin Leoy, Department of Psychology and Communication of Risk and Health, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands, Email:

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About the Study

Criminal investigation is an applied science that entails the evaluation of data that will be presented in court as evidence. A complete criminal investigation may involve searching, communicating with people, interviewing people, acquiring and preserving evidence, and using other investigative techniques. Criminal investigations today frequently make use of a variety of contemporary scientific methods known as forensic science. According to the code, both the accuser and the accused were entitled to submit the evidence they had gathered. Criminal investigations are typically carried out by government police units in the modern day. Criminal investigations are frequently completed or assisted by private investigators.

Investigative techniques

Investigative teams will look for "indicators of suspicion" that show a suspect has the following: how the crime will be committed, possibility of committing the crime, people who provide an alibi can be cleared of suspicion. Additionally, they will determine the connections between the victim and any prospective criminals.

Problems with priority bias investigation and remedies

Some criminologists are expressing the belief that there may be more crimes that would change their demographics if there were more of them after observing recent changes in the demographic composition of certain crimes during higher priority of their investigation, such as the increase in the percentage of women convicted for joining and fighting for terrorist organizations from a very low percentage to almost as many women as men as the priority of investigating terror crimes increased. According to some of the criminologists' theories, in cases where budgets are tight, criminal investigators rely on the statistical likelihood that specific groups of people will be found guilty of the crimes under investigation and ignore complaints made about people they believe to be less likely to commit the crimes or place a lower priority on tracking down or matching specific individuals to the evidence. The hypotheses hold that due to self-fulfilling prophecies in statistics, even a negligible or non-existent difference in the likelihood of committing crimes can be concealed behind a difference of a factor by many multiples in the likelihood of getting convicted. Criminals who escape detection because they are stereotyped as improbable offenders, in the opinion of these criminologists, are a serious issue. Some of these criminal scientists suggest adding more police officers.

Others express that the examinations of the evidence are more expensive than police patrols and that not all crimes can be examined, proposing that randomized priorities of individual suspects within comparable categories of crime should take the role of criminal psychology profiling. Additionally, the elimination of profiling by forensic psychology and psychiatry would result in financial savings that could be applied to the investigation of technical evidence, the pursuit of criminals who are hiding, and other investigative work that could lessen the need to ignore requests for budget cuts, according to the latter criminologists. This randomization would not only combat hidden crimes by exposing the currently unsuspected criminals to the risk of punishment, but it would also reduce the need to ignore complaints for budget cuts. The creation and use of scientific information and methodologies to assist in the resolution of legal issues that arise during criminal, civil, contractual, or other court processes is known as Forensic Psychology. It encompasses both professional practice, such as evaluating individuals to determine competency to stand trial or evaluating military veterans for service-connected disability benefits, as well as research on a variety of psychology-law topics, such as jury selection, reducing systemic racism in criminal law, and eyewitness testimony.